As the populace of the world has become more health conscious, greater numbers of people have realized they need daily cardiovascular exercise. With this realization, many people have taken up the sport of bicycling. Many of these same people have desired a cold or hot beverage while on their rides. In response to this need, entrepreneurs have developed water bottles and cages for carrying the bottles; but keeping the beverages therein cold on warm summer afternoons or hot on brisk winter days has presented a problem.
Many solutions have been suggested to this problem. For example, some cyclists begin their rides with completely frozen bottles of water, while others use a bottle with a thick insulating wall and put this inside a specialized cage for retaining the bottle. Each of these prior art solutions, however, has its drawbacks: in thin wall containers, the ice either melts too fast or does not melt fast enough, and the use of the thick prior art insulator uses up precious space that could be used for fluid.
Another conventional solution has been to provide a separate insulating jacket for disposal inside the water bottle cage. However, any water bottle used with such a jacket must be of commensurately smaller volume. An additional problem with the idea of an insulating jacket that rests within the cage is that insertion and extraction of the bottle into and out of the jacket insulator can be difficult.
Thus, a need has arisen for a water bottle insulator that: (1) does not take up valuable fluid space; (2) is effective in maintaining the beverage in a water bottle at substantially the same temperature despite the outside environment; and (3) allows for easy insertion and extraction of the bottle to and from the insulator cavity.